Paradise Lost
by kiboeme
Summary: The Hylians retaliated against Ganondorf in the worst of ways. "Neutralizing threats," they called it, but no one knew what was really going on but the Gerudo themselves. By the time of Twilight Princess, nothing is left but the writing on the wall to tell of the vanished Gerudo. Trigger warnings for genocide, rape mention, human violence, slavery, and death.


My name is Aeva, and I believe that I am the last of my people.

I was born Gerudo, destined through my mother and my own skill to be a warrior. I was proven talented in training, so enthused by my future that I barely ever stopped practicing. When the time came, I passed my Trials in the desert more quickly than any of my peers. Yet when I rose past the rank of Trainee, I found myself back on the bottom of the hierarchy among the Warriors. Despite my excellence, I was nothing beside my Sisters. I was not put out by this, not in the east. I feel like others might wonder, would crinkle their nose and ask how I could care so little for my dedication being relatively for naught. But I never thought about me. I was never disappointed or angry, only proud. Proud of my Sisters' skills, of their dedication to one another and the People they protected. Proud to stand beside them, proud to be worthy of learning from them. I was also amazed, amazed that someday, I could be one of these necessary cornerstones of support to our beautiful desert.

Our creed was firm and unforgiving, just like our home and Mother. Touch not the innocent and slay not the young nor the elderly. Honor our Mother in all ways, and respect the death you prevent and deliver. I remember swearing to the Sand Goddess that I would do this, promising with blood to give my body and spirit to keep her children safe. I recall so clearly how the fire danced like snakes, and we danced with it.

When I close my eyes, I can almost bring it all back to life. The color, the sound, the vibrancy of my world. The sands, gold as riches, embraced by the searing blue sky. Hot breeze and the scent of the sun in my nose as I rode on horseback, racing through the dunes like the wind just for fun. If I listen carefully, I can hear it too. The sighing breath of the gods in the night, the rough snap on bowstrings and the thud of targets, my language. My language, full and vibrant as the people who spoke it whispered between Youths in the night, called between friends, shouted encouragement to those working, comforting murmurs, song, loud jokes broken by laughter. Only the jokes, though.

I can see, smell, taste, hear, feel my life. Everything, everything except their laughter. Untainted by sarcasm or irony or teasing, no joke or funny thing needed to inspire it, the laugh of the Gerudo was pure joy like I've never heard from any other People. It was happy and impossibly free. Yet despite what I remember about them, I cannot remember a Gerudo laugh. I have forgotten. I've forgotten what it meant to just be joyful, to enjoy this world. I cannot even create one in my head, can't fake one in my own mind. What has become of the Children of the Sand when the last of their kind can't remember how a laugh sounds?

We had no idea that the end of the world was coming to us when it did. Our King went to Hyrule, speaking of a future for our People born of the Hylians' generosity. They had such plenty, we all knew from visits to their lands, and Ganondorf assured us that they would be more than willing to share in their bounty. The whole tribe bade him goodbye when he left on the dawn of a Thursday. That night, we celebrated the beautiful future of milk and honey that we were on the cusp of. We danced, we sang, we feasted late into Friday.

On Sunday, my Sisters on the patrol returned panicked and fleeing. Hylian soldiers were at the gate to our valley.

Our tragedy is written on the walls. We tell the stories again and again, trying so hard not to forget. Trying to keep the memories alive so that someday, someone can return and properly give all those who died that day back to the Mother. But we struggle to do this. No words can truly keep that day. Too much of it is trapped in a haze of sorrow, and too few words exist to communicate the absolute fear that permeated our fortress that afternoon. It was unexpected, and we were unprepared. We did not fight them off; how could we have?

There was no war, no battle, no clash on that day. There was only death.

Those of us not seized at the outset fled, retreating deep into our temple hidden in the desert. Only a Gerudo could truly navigate the wasteland that lay between the fortress and our hiding place, we thought. Yet still they found us. We were in prayer, in a room meant to hold our whole population only half full. With no warning, the altar suddenly exploded, shattering the images of the Sand Goddess carefully carved there into dozens of pieces on the floor. Standing in the hole left by the debris and stepping through it were the soldiers. My Warrior Sisters snarled in righteous rage, drawing their weapons and leaping for the Hylians in defense of their Sisters. Many others ran, but we had sealed the chamber to protect ourselves from the soldiers. And I, I stood transfixed by the Goddess' carved eye lying at my feet stained with a Sister's blood. The very face and home of the Mother were to harm us according to the Hylians' will.

We were detained against the wall and forced to watch as they tied the Priestesses and laid them upon pyres built on the ruins of the altar. They screamed and screamed and screamed, and I clutched my shard of the eye so tightly that its edges cut my palm and fingers. Once they were dead, the soldiers chained us.

It was days before we were allowed to see the ruins of our home. Mere days before they used their whips and chains and spears and brands to force us to throw the bodies of our Sisters into a pit, and then stone by stone dismantle the fortress we once lived in.

Too many died each day. The Gerudo who were compliant lay catatonic as the Hylians bred them, but it was not enough. Our People were hardy because of our spirit, a spirit that had now been broken. There were no instruments of suicide in the depths of the temple where they kept us, but those were not necessary to kill us. The soldiers had orders not to kill, but as they forced us to remake our beautiful Light Temple into a prison for the damned, hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and sorrow did their murder for them.

One soldier eventually told us why we had been sought out and killed. At first, we did not believe him, and then when we did not understand. It's too late to be angry about it. It always has been too late for everything. I just want to understand how this was justified.

Why were my people slaughtered and my home destroyed? Why am I alone?

No one knows our story but us. This place is still ours, and its walls bear our fate. Our memories are etched in stone there, images of the priestesses burning alive and the death mongers at our gate. Names, names and names and names inscribed anywhere we could fit them. Every surface covered in the names of the dead and the terrible story of how they died.

This place may be damned. This place may be the truest hell ever known to the Gerudo People. This place may be the epitome of our extermination, our Temple desecrated by forced Gerudo hands just to wipe us from the earth.

But I am still here, and I claim that the Gerudo live. Our legendary spirit still resides here, here in the last defiant stroke that was making this hell into a monument to all we lost and all those crushed by the Hylian boot. As the last of us I speak for all the Gerudo, and we defy you, Hylians. We will always be here in this desert. We still will not die. Our goddess lives here in this Arbiter's Grounds and so do our legends and story and names. You failed. _We are alive_.


End file.
